Looming questions won't distract Headley

Chase Headley might be on his way out of San Diego ... Chase Headley might be headed to New York or Los Angeles ... Chase Headley might be headed to [FILL IN BLANK].

The Padres’ homegrown third baseman has heard all sorts of chatter over the years as he inched closer and closer to free agency, the reverb building, naturally, as his breakout campaign in 2012 came and went without a long-term extension to remain in San Diego.

Now it’s here: The Walk Year.

The questions that come with the one-year, $10.525 million deal he signed to avoid arbitration in January would certainly trip him up some if Headley didn’t have so much practice compartmentalizing the business, the talking and the baseball sides of his job.

“For a while there, at least if you asked someone in the media, it was not if he was going to be traded but to where,” Headley said two days before a fully healed right calf allowed him to make his Cactus League debut Thursday night against the Giants. “I’ve fought through that and the contract stuff. The more you experience it, the better you get.

“I’ve seen other players go through it,” he added. “A lot of times you don’t really know how they are feeling about it because you hide it pretty well. I know, personally, it’s distracting. It’s real life. You’re talking about going somewhere else or where you’re going to be for the next five years.

“Those are real things.”

And they will be there again this year, too. Maybe at a higher decibel than ever.

There’s the near-$2 million raise despite the drop-off in production. There’s the trade winds that circulate any time a big-spending team loses a third baseman to injury. There’s the stalled negotiations to keep Headley in San Diego. There’s the talk about 2012 being the true outlier in his seven-year career.

The 29-year-old Headley might head off some of that if he didn’t sit at his locker before and after each and every win in each and every city he visits.

He sees the irony in that, yes. That responsibility – really, that accountability that David Eckstein preached during Headley’s transition to a full-time player in 2009 – also comes with the territory, he said.

“In some ways, I think the public has a right to know,” Headley said. “It’s our job to communicate to (the media) and therefore in turn communicate with fans. Yeah, maybe I’m a little bit more open than other guys about it, but I say what I think and what the truth is. There’s some things I’m not going to get into, but in a general sense it’s part of the gig.

“You have to answer those questions.”

Up and down

The difference between Chase Headley’s MVP-caliber 2012 season and his 2013 campaign is at the heart of the gap that the Padres and Headley’s representatives have been unable to bridge the last two seasons.

Chase Headley

G

PA

AB

R

H

HR

RBI

SB

BA

OBP

SLG

WAR*

2012 season

161

699

604

95

173

31

115

17

.286

.376

.498

6.2

2013 season

141

600

520

59

130

13

50

8

.250

.347

.400

3.4

Avg. 2009 -2013

146

605

532

67

143

14

66

13

.269

.352

.415

3.4

(* -- WAR (wins above replacement accounts for all contributions on a baseball field, including defense. The calculation above comes from baseball-reference.com.)

A lot of the answers weren’t so easy to find last year.

The spring training knee injury that he declined to disclose, to some degree, explains how Headley might have lost the stamina in his legs a few weeks into his return from breaking the tip of his thumb last March.

It didn’t keep him for searching for salves all season long as his numbers plummeted following a 31-homer, 115-RBI season in 2012.

He checked his vision. He tweaked his grip. And he talked about all of it along the way as San Diego and out-of-town, national reporters repeatedly asked variations of questions that boiled down to this:

What’s wrong with Chase Headley?

Even he pondered it a bit this offseason. Then he moved on, certain that no one single thing led to such a sharp decline a year ago.

“You evaluate what went right and went wrong,” Headley said when he first reported in February. “But you do that every year.”

What he’s opted not to do this year – what he didn’t want to do last year when Executive Chairman Ron Fowler publicized intentions of making an offer to Headley – was drag the non-baseball talk into the season.

That’s his position this year, too, as the season approaches with little resolution outside that fact that Headley is under contract for 2014. Little has changed, too, since he first addressed his open-ended future at the start of camp.

“I think both sides decided that it’s probably not going to happen at this time,” Headley said this week. “Which is OK. It’s not good to spin your wheels. I think both sides agree with that.”

Which will, as it always does, lead to more and more questions as the Padres move up or down the standings this summer.

Would Headley’s resurgence reframe contract negotiations this offseason? Would a slide out of contention trigger a mid-season trade? Is a qualifying offer around the corner? Is he on his way out the door?

More than likely, he will hear it all. No one expects it to become a distraction – not to Headley.

“I think he’s in a good spot to handle (playing in a walk year) this year and everything that goes along with that,” Padres manager Bud Black said. “From the media perspective – from the national media and local media – he’s fine. I think he’s learned a lot the last couple of years, going back to the trade deadline of 2012 to when his name was out there this winter.

“As time goes on, you become conditioned to these conversations and these things that happen in the media and out in the public.”

Headley’s conditions at least make it easier on him. At least some of the time.

“There’s definitely days,” Headley said, smiling, “when you feel like talking more than others. You could ask me the same question and you may get a better answer the next day, but I try to be accountable.”